


Saint Jude

by Culttherapy, SaltBud (Culttherapy)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Im weak for Thasmin Fluff and Angst, Smut, Whump, one shots, thasmin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:41:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23461816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Culttherapy/pseuds/Culttherapy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Culttherapy/pseuds/SaltBud
Summary: Saint Jude, the Patron Saint of Lost Causes.A series of Thasmin one shots, Fluff and Angst with possible Whump and Smut later on. Taking prompts- please message me on Tumblr @culttherapy
Relationships: The Doctor/Yasmin Khan, Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 19
Kudos: 48





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> On a quiet evening traveling Yasmin recognizes a song the Doctor often hums and wants to know more about it.

The Universe beyond them buzzed, a loving, warming note that radiated out of the glow of stars and endless, welcoming dark. From behind her a twin note resonated, the Doctor with her back turned to her companion, tinkering, always tinkering, and the tone rising and falling with the motions of her hands on the console. The TARDIS had opened its doors for them, arms extended out into the ether to bring them the glowing expanse of the starry heavens. The hum bled and grew, resonating inside the Doctor’s chest, a dreamy, slow moving melody that seemed to come from her without her knowledge, an afterthought in the brilliant network of moving pieces and puzzles in her mind. 

Yaz sat enamored, by the universe outside and by the tiny vessel of it that flitted around the console room, the breathing cosmos of a woman that had stumbled into her life and had irrevocably changed it. She sat on the threshold, legs swung out into the empyrean, neck craning to listen to the Doctor. She had heard the rhythm, the rumble in the Doctor’s chest before, her voice low and swimming. It made her feel dizzy and weightless, warm and secure. Whole. 

Clinks and the flutter of fingers across buttons and switches proved as accompaniment, the roll of thunder in the Doctor begging her to standing, to the slow approach she made behind the other woman. Yasmin wanted to be nearer to it, to her, to absorb the sound from a hairsbreadth away. 

“Doctor?” She expected the other woman to jump, to be surprised by her proximity but her chest fluttered when she calmly turned, dazzling smile planted on her open face, beautiful and beaming with wonder. Hazel eyes searched her own, the melody stopped and replaced with the keen eagerness to please her companion. 

“What’s up Yaz?”

“That tune you were humming, what is it? I’ve heard you hum it before.” She watched the Doctor’s features fall, a brief plummet before she screwed them up into a mask that almost mirrored the beam that had possessed her moments before. 

“Oh…that, it’s an old Gallifreyan traveling song. Sorry if it was bothering you Yaz.” She made to turn back to the console but a hand caught her elbow, firm, but kind, a thumb flicking under the fabric of her rolled, white, sleeve, smoothing the skin below. 

“No, I…I like it a lot. Tell me more about it.” Yaz’s closeness hadn’t registered with the Doctor until that moment, the feel of her breath against her cheek sending a heated flush growing beneath it and she cursed this body for being so transparent.

“Well, traditionally they’re hummed while traveling, sometimes we sing them when we’re together, to celebrate, but when we’re away they’re meant to be felt as vibrations, not words. See Yaz, the universe is very good at carrying hums, the deep movement of sound, and so when a Gallifreyan hums one, the universe picks it up and carries it from one of us to the other. It’s meant as a comfort, to let the others know we’re safe, and that we’ll return, to our families, to home. They’re a signal of hope.” 

With the last word her eyes fell, a nervous hand coming to flick a curtain of stray blond away from her eyes before scraping them back up to meet Yaz’s again, open and glassy, a raw emotion passing through them meant only for Yaz before it was hidden away again. 

“And since I’m…well, there are only two of us now, and I don’t know-"

The hand that held her by the elbow swam, warm and caring, up to her shoulder, tracing gently against the curve of her collar bone before coming to rest atop her breast plate. She could feel the light thrum of the shaking within the thin fingers, heat melting from them through her shirts. 

“Do it again? For me Doctor. I want to feel it.” Yaz’s honey eyes held hers, lingering as she waited. 

Slowly, self-consciously, a rolling warble started below her hand, the Doctor’s gaze unwavering as she brought the crescendo of sound into the depths of her chest, beneath Yaz’s hand and between the duel beat of her two hearts. It pulsed through Yaz's palm, into the bones and flesh of her arm and slowly Yaz’s own chest filled with warmth, with a sensation of hope and kindling ignited. The melody dipped and peaked, languidly drifting from note to note. It overwhelmed her, the loveliness of the story of the Doctor’s race, the loveliness of the vibrations of her history and her home, the sadness that was indelibly married with it. 

Without thought she broke the contact of hand on chest and stopped the hum on the Doctor’s lips, her hand cupping the hard slope of the other woman’s jaw, her lips soft and certain as she pressed them to the Doctor’s. Her mind clouded and the Doctor responded in kind, fingers pressing surely into her hips, lip’s moving against her own as a new rumble birthed from within the Doctor as a wanting groan. 

Pulling away Yaz breathed deeply, resting her forehead on the Doctor’s, eyes scanning the deepened pink flush that swelled her lips, her hazel eyes closed as she breathed in turn. 

“Doctor?” 

“Yaz, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have.”

“Doctor. Please look at me.”

Her eyes opened, somehow glassier than before, sheepish and shy as she swung them, heavy lidded to look into Yaz’s.

“Doctor, you still have a home. It just looks like Ryan, and Graham, and me, now.” 

The Doctor’s eyes flicked back and forth, searching, the helpless openness of her face reading to Yasmin like a book, hope, and fear, and love, and shame. Slowly, she traced the curve of the Doctor’s cheekbone, thumbing away the heavy drop of a tear let loose, before leaning in, capturing her lips gently with her own in another kiss she hoped emitted all the caring and hope and love of a Gallifreyan traveling song.


	2. Hold Tight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor has a habit of holding on tight. Yaz has taken notice. Very light mentions of smut/whump/blood.

The first time Yaz noticed it was the first time she had seen the Doctor sleep. Wind-bitten and soot covered they had all returned to the TARDIS, exhaustion weighing their limbs down and terror fizzling out into the dying twitches of adrenaline. Ryan and Graham had disappeared to the med-bay, a nasty gash marring Graham’s browbone, matted with coal dust. The team had answered a call from an industrialized planet, Thumnu, built on years of labor work in coal mines and fuel production. As adventuring with their alien companion typically sorted they had ended up in a load of trouble. They had interrupted a coal consuming alien, encrusted and glistening with diamonds and the bones of the workers it had carelessly ingested while harvesting coal, and it had not been pleased.

Tiredly, stubbornly, the Doctor had insisted they all retire to their rooms, but didn’t make a move to budge herself. Hours later, showered but unable to sleep Yasmin had stumbled on wobbly legs into the console room in search of the older woman, finding the crystalline arches dimmed to a low, soothing glow, making the form of the Doctor hard to make out against the control panel. She lay, slumped to her left side, knees tucked tight to her chest, soot and grime and what Yaz knew to be blood still streaked across her face. Despite the telltale wrinkle between her brows she looked calm, lost completely to sleep. Yaz had never seen her so still.

Wrapped around her own body like a sash her left arm lay flush to her abdomen, snaking beneath her right bicep to land in the right pocket of her coat, hand fisted tightly into the fabric there, grip like a vice. Gently Yaz had bent down, her own fingers tracing the bit’s of the Doctor’s she could see from their nest in the light blue fabric. Slowly the pale digits uncurled, knuckles pinking with the blood flow. Beside her the sleeping woman sighed, the sound sending the corners of Yaz’s lips curling into a smile. She tucked an errant strand of hair behind the Doctor’s ear before she stood and, not before stepping on the pedal beside her sleeping friend to take a custard cream, left the console room to return to her own. 

The second time she noticed it was far less pleasant, her arms aching with the Doctor’s weight as the alien’s body writhed against her in pain. The injured woman had been plopped into her hold by Ryan after his well intended but fumbled attempt to carry her on his own failed as he’d slammed her shoulder roughly into a door. This time Yasmin couldn’t tell if the action was voluntary or not, but the Doctor’s fingers twisted hard into the neckline of Yaz’s newly blood-stained sweater. The sensation was choking and it made Yaz’s neck ache, but she daren’t remove the grasp before getting the Doctor to safety. Like one body the three uninjured traveler’s hurtled towards the TARDIS, the Doctor’s boots rebounding off of Graham’s chest several times as he held Yasmin’s back to steady her. Blessedly the old girl had opened her doors for them. 

Yaz nearly skidded in, dropping to her knees, body curled protectively around the woman in them as they slid across the warm floor. A guttural moan tore from the Doctor’s lips, the hair on the back of Yaz’s neck coming to stand on end with the exhalation. She could feel Ryan and Graham hovering over her, unsure what to do. A nervous cough sounded from one of the two, which, she couldn’t tell. It felt like time had slowed.

“Right.” As she said it she felt the body in her arms tense with an alarming jolt, then the fingers dug into her sweater loosen, and like a ripple effect, the Doctor’s entire body seemed to melt. 

“Where's the medical?” When the men above her failed to move she made to stand, her knees buckling as she struggled to lift them both off the floor. Steady hands had caught her by the elbows and thankfully the TARDIS had placed the med-bay close by.

The third time Yasmin noticed it were the minutes after they had slept together for the first time. The Doctor, nude and seeming to glow in the dim light of Yaz’s bedroom, had crawled back up her naked, shuddering form to hold her, warm arm slung around the smallest part of her waist. Yaz came down from her orgasm slowly, the older woman’s breath hot against her neck. Yaz was the first to laugh, the sound an echo of delight that rose in her chest and blew the Doctor’s hair into a fan away from her hazel eyes. At first the other woman had been confused, propping herself up on a bent arm to stare down at Yasmin’s quick attempt to smother the mirth. She pursed her lips tight, the break of a smile twitching at their edges before she failed into a full belly laugh, the arm around her tightening in response. 

The absurdity of the situation, one that Yaz had hoped would happen, but never really dreamt it actually would, had exploded within her and she couldn’t control the giddy response. Mid laugh she bent upward, capturing the Doctor’s lips with her own in a kiss intended to steal the blonde’s breath. The Doctor had smiled slowly, then chuckled against her mouth in return, pressing her firmly back into the mattress as she flicked a tongue against the fullness of her bottom lip. When they finally broke apart, chests heaving, the Doctor’s hand had curled itself into a wave of the sheets beside Yasmin’s hip, the fabric pulling against her skin. She listened intently as the Doctor’s breathing quietly slowed, the thud of her duel hearts slowing against her, but the grip never loosening. 

The fourth time she noticed it they had been up late, lying in the Doctor’s bed, a rarely used expanse they both had ended up on, fully clothed, speaking in captivated whispers. It had become a ritual; When the team would return to Sheffield for some time back in their ordinary lives Yaz would stick behind for one night, the TARDIS parked in its customary spot in a wooded section of Sky Edge Fields. 

Often the night would be sleepless, to absorb as much of each other as they could, the Doctor rarely sleeping and Yasmin happy to pull an all-nighter to keep up with her partner. They would make love, would read aloud to one another, would dance around the console room, would lay awake together discussing magnitudes, from the memories attached to the scent of Yaz’s Nan’s Chole Bhature to the first time the Doctor learned what the dying sigh of a star sounded like. Anything so long as they were in each other’s company. 

On this particular night Yaz had known it had been too long since the Doctor had last slept, her eyes drooping lazily despite the dazzling, fascination-drunk smile she offered Yaz. Tenderly the younger woman had brushed a streak of blond behind the Doctor’s ear, carefully removing the earring that donned it before sitting up. Slowly she removed the Doctor’s old boots, letting them drop to the ground with a thud, then worked her way up to her braces, reaching gently between the waistband of her trousers and shirts to unbutton the fasteners. A swish of fabric and they landed on the ground beside the bed, her own shoes following suit. Yaz took up her familiar position on the left side of the bed, lying on her back, an arm opened towards the woman beside her, welcoming. 

“Come on then, you.” She gestured languidly with her open palm. The Doctor scooted, nose scrunching into a tired admittance of defeat. The woman lay curled into Yasmin’s side, knee tucked up against Yaz’s thighs, the other leg slung across her. 

“I’m really not that tired you know.” She stifled a yawn despite herself and tucked harder against her partner. 

“Mmhmm.” Yaz placated, wrapping the open arm firmly around the alien’s shoulders. 

This time a hand crawled up her side, administering soft circles of finger-tip trails before landing on the sweeping space between the butterfly spread of Yaz’s ribcage. Methodically the Doctor’s bone white fingers tucked and folded the fabric of the shirt that sat below them, coming to rest with a fistful of t-shirt, red and seeping between knuckles like fabric blood. Cautiously Yasmin moved her own hand to rest atop it, quiet until the even hush of the Doctor’s breath signaled her fall into sleep. 

Yasmin had come to learn that the Doctor’s grip, the hold she unconsciously took up in her sleep was a habit of grounding; it stilled her ever working hands, anchored her to something real. Untangling her strong fingers, Yaz softly slipped her own between them, their palms warm, pressed together, three pulses thrumming in time.

“I’ve got you.”


	3. Giving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is a doozy y'all. Warning: Very graphic whump, major character death.
> 
> When an alien ship attacks The Fam the Doctor puts herself between the danger and those she loves, and the consequences are dire.

She could feel herself crying, the heavy raindrop roll of tears sliding through muck and burn and grime down through the hollows of her cheeks. The inside of her was tearing it’s way out, like a cell, minuscule and eminent all at once, deep in the well of her chest, exploding. It tried to expel its entire life force, expanding with the violence of fire and heat and smoke and terror. And she would not trade it for the world. The pain, the tearing of flesh, spilling of blood, the snap and shard of bone, broken. It was hers to keep and to endure so that Yasmin Kahn, brilliant, lovely, bright Yasmin Kahn, would not have to. 

The Doctor’s cavalier ascent to martyr, the instinct to put herself between danger and the things she loved most, she knew would one day be the ruin of her. Now, as her destiny came to its actualization she knew it would be her final action, would be the act for which she would be most proud. Saving Yasmin Kahn. She knew also, that while this body was healthy and young, powerful, that her soul, her spirit and mind were so, so tired. And the pain. The pain was new, it was different, a period at the end of something long. The stop at the end of the greatest story of a mind that remembered scraps and pieces of everything and endured despite it. It felt a part of her, a kinship that came both from within her and from the violence perpetrated against her.

She could feel Yasmin beside her to one side, splayed, and she was grateful that she could not see her face, that the younger woman was unconscious to the decimation around them and to the Doctor’s body. She could see Graham ahead of her, a staggering, but safe, scuttling form in the smoke, his greying hair lit from behind like a haloed crown of spikes, and Ryan. Sweet Ryan coughed heavily, panting beside Yaz, gasps and whimpers grounding deep in his throat as he checked on her. A huge, rattling gasp seized him suddenly and she heard him crawl from Yaz on heavy limbs to bend and hurl, vomit spattering against the pavement in a rhythm that mirrored, heavier, the sound of her own blood splashing onto the cement. 

The urge to look away, to neglect her torn, mangled body endeavored to win out against her immutable curiosity, peaking even now, amongst the destruction. Her eyes locked, squinted and lost on the horizon, scanning it for the ship she knew was gone, that had fled after its attack. Had disappeared after she had so roughly throttled Yaz out of the way of the shrapnel beam that had born from it before take off. 

She must look, _needed_ to look before the dwindling pattern of her hearts slowed to the halt towards which they charged. A deep breath, as deep as she could take, the sting of air a blip in the hurt encamping her, and she ripped her gaze from the sky and onto herself. 

Her left ankle and the foot that grew below it were gone entirely, a stump of mess and bodily debris. She stared at it, unseeing until a startling numbness began to overtake the left side of her face. An eerie, tingle-less sensation of loss that slowly, horridly stole the vision from her left eye, first with a wave of red, as though looking through burgundy cellophane, and then darkness. Beside her she heard the gentle pull of fabric and ruptured cement, heard a breathless, feminine cry. A bitter thought interrupted the panic she had not recognized growing deep within her. So much for Yasmin missing this. 

A deep, unruly pain at her side jolted her from her stupor and she reached, unknowing, to her flesh, her fingers dipping beneath what were once firm layers of skin, to touch soft parts never before bared to air, that greeted the atmosphere with bloodied smiles, and slick, rounded cases. She looked down upon her side, removed from the sensation of looking into herself, at the moving, pulsing life of the offal gleaming within her. This. This she could not regenerate from. 

Another shriek beside her as she brought her hand back towards her own face, glossy and cardinal, its last two digits missing, and she turned to meet the most stunningly beautiful eyes. The eyes she had warmed to the very first moment they had found hers, the eyes she had seen so full of hope, and keen knowledge, and willingness, and kindness and power, now glistening with a depth of horror, but still so, so beautiful. 

“I’m sorry Yasmin Kahn.” She was unsure she would be able to control her mouth around the words but they filled the air between them like clouds, pinked with the dying day. And then, as the world tilted around her, a rotating zoetrope of land and sky and stars and universe, she dissolved into nothing. 

When she awoke again she lay, unable to move, flat against something hard and cold, the only sensations reaching her audible and tactile. Sound hustled around her, a cacophony of lungs and scraping and voices, panic. Hands gripped and tugged and scratched and it all hurt, it all dealt her devastating pain and none of it was decipherable. 

“Stop.” Her voice was not her own and it surprised her as it crept from between her lips. Suddenly the sound and the motion halted, the air in the room thickening. 

“Doctor?” Yasmin sounded hoarse, throat emitting a tired, windblown noise. A hand gripped, just barely, a bird landing on a broken branch, on the wrist above her missing fingers. 

“I…” The Doctor’s own voice broke, transforming into an unbridled, wretched groan that stole what breath she had managed to inhale. Slowly, she sucked in another.

“Yaz.” She shook her injured arm loose from the ghostly grip, forcing her damaged hand between warm, thin fingers to hold Yasmin’s. 

“I…I’m leaving Yaz.” Something hot and liquid pressed against her closed eyelid and she forced it open, one eyed, taking in a mucus-screen distorted vision of the younger woman, close, inches from her own face, weeping.

“No,” Yasmin looked over her shoulder and a loud sniff sounded. Ryan and Graham. She could sense them now near her crumpled legs. “No, Doctor, we’ve only just begun, we’ve had so little time with you. Please. You’re going to be okay.”

“Yasmin-”

“No, you’re okay, we’re going to fix you, the TARDIS will, I-”

“I’m leaving.” The Doctor’s voice had grown into a weak, slippery sound, and Yasmin felt her knees go weak, a shaking taking up her frame. They had managed to get the Doctor to the TARDIS, on to one of the metal beds in the medical bay, but she was so hurt, so far gone.

Her heart was shattering, was combusting and it threatened to shred her very being. The Doctor couldn’t leave them now, couldn’t leave her now. Not when their love was so new, and so deep and so achingly true. She had only just found the meaning of herself, her purpose, and it was so irrefutably ingrained into the essence of, the cells, the life and exuberance of this being made of stars and light. She couldn’t leave her now. 

The Doctor’s good eye swam around the room, landing on their faces one by one, taking in their hope, and terror and love, landing finally on those eyes again, those brilliant eyes. 

“Yasmin Kahn.” Her chest shuttered into rising with a rattled breath. “I’m so sorry, I have to go.” Yay gripped tightly onto her spoiled hand, pain be damned if it jolted her into staying alive.

The Doctors eyes pleaded with her, a final effort to convey something words could not. 

“I love you. All of you.” And she was gone.


	4. Sunlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a rare quiet moment during one of the Fam's summer adventures the Doctor reflects on her adoration for a certain companion.

It was hot. The sticky, dewy air of summer bathed them in the cloud scattered blaze of dusk. The turn in weather had been sudden and angry, a warpath of nature, blazed through the early months of summer and Yasmin Khan basked in it. The heat of the air and sun enrobed her in a golden tan and donned her with an enrapturing smile. And the Doctor basked in her, in the glow that radiated from her like a beacon guiding the Doctor home. 

She had brought the Fam, under the sweltering sun’s gaze, to a beach on Ohrsdinto to escape the muggy heat wave dumping rain on Sheffield. A planet composed of land that grew far across the curve of one half of it’s round body, and stretched for hours and hours in deep, turquoise ocean across it’s opposite half, Ohrsdinto boasted a perfect circumference of the most spectacular beaches at it’s equator. The planet matched rotation with the Earth’s orbit and met its seasons full swing, though for impossibly longer periods of time. A summer on Earth lasted in most places a few months of the year, winter a mirrored few months. On Ohrsdinto summer lasted ages, for years and years of Earth time, and it’s winter the same, the transition between seasons a slow one. 

Beside her, behind the rippled air of heat refractions, Graham and Ryan tossed a ball between themselves. Hoots and hollers erupted from their bustle intermittently as Ryan dove through a raised curtain of sand, launched skyward as he skidded for a catch, or Graham hustled after the ball, complaining endearingly about his old knees. The Doctor sat, jacket discarded beside her in a heap that peeked from the top of Yaz’s wicker beach basket, her hands shoved, delightfully tactile and warmed, into the gritty sand on either side of her thighs, pants rolled high above her knees. And Yasmin Khan, a goddess in the backlit, skimming light that made her look forged from gold and magic, stood before her, ankle deep in the blue ocean. 

The Doctor could feel her hearts swell, her breath catching as she looked on at the most glorious thing in the universe, the perfection of humanity’s capacity for kindness and beauty, all bundled within the strong muscles, good heart and charming grace of one Yasmin Kahn. Very awesome human indeed. Were anyone so deserving of all of the universe, every last corner and star and dusted asteroid, it was Yaz. Always so brilliant, so loyal, so willing to let her dedication, her vulnerability and passion to be read like a book across her pretty face. The Doctor knew she would be powerless but to worship at the feet of such an incredible force the moment she had torn through the cosmos to meet her on that train. What an exquisite face, what a sharp tongue and mind. Oh, hello PC, no, Yasmin Kahn. 

She watched, fingers weaving through the remnants of once large rock and substantial mineral crushed now to fine grit, serene. The wind whipped around them, blown over from the other side of the world where land met sea, and ruffled a dancing crown of black around Yaz’s head, her hair let down for once. The flicker of a memory, the softest pull of hair, a handful of those black waves as Yaz lay beneath her, the most ethereal sounds growing from between her swollen pinked lips. How had she gotten so lucky? The Doctor prided herself on her ability, her skill and tact, her wits, but in all truth the luck the universe had afforded her, had gifted her, undeserved, reached far beyond her ability. 

Sand skidded up around her, kicked up on the flat of a foot, and she gazed skyward, pulled from the inside of her own mind by a dazzling smile and eyes squinted against the ochre light of the setting sun. 

“Wish we could stay like this forever.” Yaz sat beside her with the words, hip and shoulder pressed against her, knees bent, legs bare below the hem of a summer dress. Sweat glittered across her face and shoulders, a magic trick in the evening light that made her appear to glow from within. How astoundingly unaware of your power you are, Yasmin Kahn.   
Slowly, the Doctor resurrected her hand from the fever of the sand, brushing gently against Yaz’s before entwining their pinkies between them. For a moment she tuned out the world, listening only to the soft thud and ripple of blood through the younger woman’s body, felt the press and rhythm of her human heart through their joined appendages. 

“That would be all I could ever ask for Yaz.” She matched the beaming contentment that painted Yasmin’s features, turning back to the sight of the suns final bow reflecting across the water, and the sounds of the boy’s last game of the day playing out beside them.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll keep writing on my own but I'm also looking for prompts! If you'd like to see something written please message me on tumblr @Culttherapy


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